I just finished the midterm for my Principles of Programming Languages
class with Professor Mitch Wand and it was an absolutely exciting
experience. So exciting that when I got home I wrote an email to
Professor Wand telling him that it was the most exciting exam I've
had at Northeastern. It was filled with all these exciting mind-bending
puzzles complete with subtle nuances and all kinds of exciting stuff!

So then I told S that I just wrote my professor to tell him that the
exam was really awesome. Then it occurred to me that I'm a nerd--the
evidence is clear on that note. Then I said, "Gosh--I should just
follow it up with an entry on my blog!" At that point, S burst out
laughing and said, "You know you're a nerd when you come home from
a midterm, write to the professor telling him it was really great,
and then write a blog entry about the whole thing complete with
introspection of the entire event." Well, she didn't say that whole
thing, but she was definitely thinking it.

Gah... For some reason, I've got two whitehosts-list files on my
system. One in /etc/greylist/ and the other in /var/lib/greylist/ .

It's also interesting to note that the greylistd doesn't look at
either file, the files are used by rules in the Exim configuration.
So when I added the gmail items (64.233) to whitehosts-list and
then tried to check it with greylist check --grey ... I
was using the wrong checking tool. Whoops! 30 minutes down the
drain!

Anyhow, once I discovered that whitehosts-list is in the Exim
configuration files (and I should have realized that because I put
it there) and not checked by greylistd, I discovered that the
Exim configuration files check both copies of whitehosts-list.
There's likely a good reason for that. Probably even my fault to
begin with. Something to look into when I have some spare cycles
and feel like pouring through Exim configuration, Debian policy
for directories and configuration files, and all the other pieces
in between.

Also, the Nokia 770 comes with two stylii (not sure why), which allowed
S and I to play Mahjong together. That was a little comical since there
were two of us huddled over this little tiny screen. Still, it was
really fun.

I also had WIFI and web-browsing capabilities everywhere I was which
was really nice.

Batteries held out pretty well. I went two or three days of medium
usage with the light set to low and the WIFI off without any problem.
I brought the charger which is pleasantly small and charged the battery
at the airport before the return flight home.

It's been helpful at school, too, since I can check my gmail account
wherever I am on campus.

I read A 770
is ultra-small and mobile, but not a UMPC over at
Internet Tablet Users Blog
and they mention a series of issues people are having... but I'm not
having any of them. My browser has never crapped out, the device has never
hung, I'm not having problems loading any web-sites that I look at
(though I don't look at Palm Addict), no problems with memory or speed
of the device, ...

I have to admit when I first saw the Origami marketing, I wondered for
a bit about whether I should have waited and bought a UMPC, but... the
Nokie 770 runs on free software and I can write programs that run on it
without having to purchase Microsoft software licenses and that's a big
plus for me.

Additionally, I think I'll look for a digital camera that takes the same
kind of MMC card my Nokia takes when I'm in the market for a new digital
camera. That'd be really neat: take a picture, put the card in my
Nokia, email it to people I know--all with devices I put in my
pocketses.

Anyhow, happy so far. The only minor issue is that the text for books
is so small that it's hard to read if I'm in an airplane going through
turbulence.

A couple of issues ago, Don Marti passed editorialship of Linux Journal
to a new guy who immediately started tossing in his "rants" at the end
of the magazine. Additionally, the magazine got a face-over which seems
to me to be more marketing-oriented than content oriented but that
might fix itself over the next few issues.

Regardless, I find the "rants" to be obnoxious at best and downright
juvenile at worst. I find people who enjoy ranting and enjoy arguing
like it's a pleasurable hobby to be far worse for the general state
of things than those who research and mull in a quieter fashion.

For example, in the April 2006 issue, he rants with incredible vitriol
about people who are working towards building a clean-room open-source
implementation of Java. He goes on to say that he'd happily pay Sun
if they charged for Java because he uses Jedit and it's the best editor
on the planet.

This is such a bizarre misunderstanding of the state of things and he's
managed to do all of this in two paragraphs. But there's more! He
moves on to ranting about a bunch of other stuff and ends with this:

"Use what's best. What a concept. Linux developers seem to get it.
It's about time the open-source zealots got it too."

I find this stunningly naive and ignorant. Worse, it's one-sided and
emotionally-charged misleading drivel that other people are going to
read. It's definitely NOT what belongs in Linux Journal which up until
this new editor was filled with intelligent material, clever humor,
and useful information that I was eager to read every month.

Anyhow, bottom line is that my subscription is up next month and I'm not
going to renew.

I was tossing around not writing a blog entry about this, but then I
noticed Jeff Waugh write
his
thoughts which interestingly match mine.

I have greylistd installed (on Debian with exim) and noticed last
monday (March 6th) that Google has something like 26 outgoing SMTP
servers for gmail. That doesn't work well with greylistd, though.
So I added "64.233" to the whitehosts list. Not sure if that's
the right thing to do or not, though. I'm not wildly excited about
adding items to the whitehosts list.

I switched from Premier Insurance to Amica Insurance a month ago. As
I continue to interact with Amica about various things (renter's insurance,
billing issues, ...), I'm increasingly happy I made the move. Premier
was like a brick wall--any time I wanted to talk to them, I had to go
through an agent and they would hem and haw about my problem and then
mull over it and offer four thousand excuses and other useless bits
of trivia and then finally get around to calling Premier and talking
it over with them.

I called up Amica, got a dedicated person to help me through switching
over, answering my questions, and making sure everything went through
ok. Every time I call them I get an intelligent human who knows what
I'm talking about and helps me to fix the problem and my longest wait
time has been three minutes. On top of that, they send me correspondence
that's not written in insurance-speak and my premium is $150 less than
it was with Premier.

Figured I'd write this up in case anyone else in the Massachusetts area
had Premier and/or was looking to switch. Amica is good so far. At
a bare minimum, it seems that if I were to have problems, they have
the ability to help me through them.

I've been reading about them for about 6 months now and I've been tossing
around whether to get one or not since they started selling. I have
a Sharp Zaurus 5600 which I never use and so I figured I'd pine over but
never actually buy a Nokia 770.

Then I had a change of heart. I bought one because it's easy to use,
small, has a full-blown Linux distribution that takes .deb packaged
files, has a great web-browser, is in constant development as an
Open Source project, and someone's gone and ported Python to it.

I ordered it on Sunday and it showed up on Wednesday. I've been getting
to know it for a little under a day now and I'm really impressed--it
both fits my needs and extends my ability to do things very nicely. I'm
planning to bring it travelling next week with a load of PDFs on it of
things I want to read. Additionally, I've been able to check email which
helped me get to a meeting yesterday night after I had forgotten the
location.

We have forced-hot-water heat that gets piped through these monster
radiators under windows in various rooms of our spacious apartment.
In the cold winter months, it's sometimes very pleasant to sip a
cup of tea while sitting on a radiator as it's warming up (they're
not on all the time) and look out the window at the shabby house
next door and count the places that no longer have paint.

However, it is quite a shock when you've made your cup of tea and
you're prepared to spend a quiet moment contemplating paint and
you sit down on the radiator blissfully forgetting that there is a hole
in your pants.

I have an interesting idea for a card game. I want to make all the cards
and print them out myself, but I'm not sure what to use for card-stock
and/or how to go about doing it. Anyone know of pointers on the Internet
that talk about publishing a card game? Think something like Uno in the
sense that there are cards, but otherwise entirely unlike Uno.